


Cursed Craptions

by uglydisgrace (beautifuldisgrace)



Category: Purple Hyacinth - Ephemerys & Sophism (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack, Cursed AU, Gen, M/M, capitalization is nowhere to be seen im sorry, he was a skater boy she said see you later boy, i hate the instagram caption limit with my whole heart, lauren and koko as sherlock and watson, skater au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:08:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26233927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifuldisgrace/pseuds/uglydisgrace
Summary: literally the title. peep the insta @webtoonroasts.
Relationships: Hermann/Tristan Sinclair, Lauren Sinclair & Koko
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	1. the adventures of lauren and koko

**Author's Note:**

> so. instagram didn't let me upload my full captions because of the 2000 character limit so i'll have to settle with putting them on ao3.

imagine an au where young lauren goes to the carmine camellia with her parents one day and convinces them to let her get a pet peacock. (they’re rich and lauren’s an only child. they’d probably do it for her.) lauren names the peacock koko, and they’re inseparable. koko is her best friend, second only to dylan. 

after allendale, which koko blissfully misses because pets aren’t allowed at the station, lauren pledges to find the leader and take down the phantom scythe. a few months after allendale, lauren visits her uncle’s attic because he has picture albums with photos of her parents and dylan, which help her with her grief. she stumbles upon an old amulet with the initials “s.t.f.” she puts the amulet on and finds out that she can now talk to animals. 

she enlists her best friend koko to help her in her investigations.  koko’s specialty is psychological torture--unsurprising since peacocks are absolutely terrifying. lauren interrogates people whilst koko hovers menacingly near them, instilling fear in even the blackest of hearts with his stupefying gaze. 

needless to say, they take down the phantom scythe in a mere ten months, just in time for lauren to start seventh grade.

~~ little does lauren know, allendale was orchestrated by koko as a way to establish him as lauren's #1 friend once and for all. ~~


	2. trismann skater au

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> screw the instagram caption character limit. all my homies hate the instagram caption character limit.

middle-aged mall cop hughes hermann lives in the suburbs with his wife karen and his stinky chihuahua cooper. from the outside, his life seems pretty good. but the truth is, he hates his job, and his wife. (classic boomer!) one night while he’s driving home from the mall, he passes by the skate park. he starts to feel angry, not because he hates the skaters, but because they remind him of what he could have been.

-

the year was XX92. hughes hermann and tristan sinclair were regulars at the local skate park. they were the best of the best: they had no competition when it came to skill or daring, save for each other. many people expected them to be friends, but no--they despised each other.

well, autumn rolled around, and with it, the annual ardhalis skate games. in an unfortunate turn of events, hughes and tristan found that they were mistakenly registered and would have to compete as teammates. the official skateboarding council (does that exist? idk) was adamant that no changes would be made. they were from the same precinct anyways, they reasoned. why couldn’t they compete together? and it was only for one event, too. too stubborn to admit that it was because they hated each other, they grudgingly agreed to the terms. not wanting to be the one that dragged the team down, they started training harder and they started training together. at first, it was rough. they could never get along (hughes hated tristan’s ego and tristan hated hughes’s constantly hostile attitude) but eventually they made it work. and just in time, too. at the games, they worked together like a well-oiled machine and took home well-deserved gold medals.

in a state of euphoria from their victory, they decided to celebrate by going drinking. after one too many tankers downed, they stumbled back to hermann’s hotel room and ended up having a one-night-stand. when hermann woke up, tristan was already gone. 

hermann then headed to the skate park to look for tristan, but he was nowhere to be found. one of the other locals told him that tristan had been seen hailing a cab with a suitcase in hand, likely on his way to the airport. hermann felt his heart shatter into a million tiny pieces. after that day, he threw away his skateboards, donated his skate shoes, and hid his medals in the attic. he swore that he would never skate again.

-

back to the present. one day as hermann drives by the skate park, he sees a familiar figure: a girl with dark red hair and piecing golden eyes. he recognizes her from a news article he read recently about up-and-coming skaters. what was her name again? lauren sullivan? lauren schmidt? then, his mouth drops. lauren sinclair. sinclair. oh, how that name has poisoned his mind. in a daze, he walks up to her. to his surprise, she greets him cheerfully.

“hello, mr. hermann!” she says. 

shocked, he asks, “how do you know who i am?”

“my uncle talks about you all the time! he’s been meaning to meet up with you, but his duties as the president of the national skateboarding council have kept him busy!”

hermann doesn’t know what to say.

sensing his apprehension, lauren says, “i could get his contact info for you. here-” and she offers him her phone to enter his number into.

a few days later, hermann gets a call from tristan. his voice is the same honeyed vibrato that haunts his dreams, just a little weather-worn and a little deeper. they agree to meet up at the coffee shop the next afternoon to catch up after all this time.

the day of their meetup, hermann tells his wife karen that he’s going grocery shopping, not wanting to reveal that he’s meeting his former lover because she would flip out. at the coffee shop, time slows as hermann pushes the heavy door open. tristan is sitting at a table by the window, his brown hair mussed, his round glasses perched atop his roman nose. hermann’s heart thumps so loudly, he’s surprised the walls don’t come crashing down. he’s a little weak-kneed as he takes the seat across from tristan. 

the meeting goes well. tristan tells him that he’s been traveling the world as the president of the national skateboarding council, establishing new chapters and supervising competitions. they make small talk for a while before hermann finally acknowledges the elephant in the room.

“why did you leave?” he asks. he wants to shout, how could you leave me?

tristan looks at him sadly. “in my eyes, it was my only choice. i was scared. i was scared of how much i loved you, huey.”

the confession hits him like a bag of bricks.

“do you still love me?” he whispers.

“yes.”


	3. the mystery riot man's backstory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which i make up and write a backstory for the mystery man from ep 8/9 in 30 minutes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is really short because i needed it to meet insta's caption length restrictions :')

a soft breeze caressed the boy’s cheekbones, doing little to chase away the drops of sweat rolling down his neck like a motorcade of hearses. it had been ironic, really, that the funeral had been on the warmest day of the season when his father had died of hypothermia. there was just something about drunks and bridges over cold water that didn’t mix. 

but if it was going to be scalding outside, so be it. his father’s body would just rot faster. his mouth soured in distaste as he thought about the utter disgrace of a man that lay before him in the casket. after he’d landed that fancy new job with the merriweather shipping company, he’d been out later and later, coming home in the wee hours of morning stinking of whiskey and flowery perfume. no one liked to admit it, but there was something shady about the merriweathers. there were rumors of criminal activity--whispers in barroom corners about cargo that wasn’t exactly legal. whispers about involvement with the phantom scythe.

someone coughed, interrupting his thoughts. he turned to see a figure swathed in black chiffon, lady garamond: his father’s employer before the merriweathers. the tears trickling down her cakey face were obviously fake. he scoffed. how he hated the rich and powerful and their imitations of emotions. perhaps the scythe had been right.

twenty years later, as he mounted the statue of saint helvetica, he spotted a squadron of police officers nearing the square. a wicked grin flitted across his lips. let them come for him. he was their obedient servant, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> random fun facts:  
> \- all the characters are named after fonts. this is because i was working in google docs and needed some names really quickly. :')  
> \- the last line was originally going to be "nothing they could take from him was worth keeping, anyways" because i had no ideas about how to end it so i was like, "might as well just throw in a hunger games ref" but then i changed it to be a hamilton ref. :')


	4. lady a analysis

if there’s one thing english class has taught me, it’s how to overanalyze everything. so today, we’ll be doing a deep character analysis of lady arthingham!

lady a is viewed as sus by many members of the fandom due to her and her butler often popping up in the middle of a lune mission. let’s take a look at where the pair has been spotted in the series so far: outside the 11th precinct, at the golden clover, at the lonely traveler’s inn, and at the carmine camelia. the golden clover and the carmine camelia are both known to be frequented by the affluent, so we can’t mark their appearances as suspicious. the same thing goes for the 11th precinct, which is one of the wealthier areas of the city. what doesn’t make sense is why the lady and her butler would be staying at the lonely traveler’s inn. the location of the inn is fairly close to the grim goblin, which we can tell from the short time it took flemmings to walk between the two locations. due to its proximity to greychapel, the inn would likely be viewed as cheap and substandard by many members of the aristocracy.

let’s go on a brief tangent on lady a’s family. we can deduce that they are upper class, possibly rich merchants. since lady a doesn’t seem like the entrepreneur type, it is likely that the money was made by a relative and she simply had the good luck to inherit a great deal of it. she has the title of “lady '”, so her family must be rather influential. but what troubles me is how relatively unknown she is to the citizens of ardhalis. we know that both lauren and will come from old-guard, noble families, and yet neither of them recognize her. one possibility is that the arthingham family is 1) part of the  _ nouveau-riche _ , rejected by the old-money families and 2) purposefully very private to prevent the public from knowing about their more sinister connections.

that brings me to one of my main points: it is extremely likely that lady a is part of the phantom scythe. the ps targets supporters of the crown, exacting revenge against those who indulge in  _ panem et circenses _ and do nothing for the masses of the poor that they build their ivory towers upon. while lady a hasn’t shown herself to be a socialist philanthropist, she hasn’t been shown as a strong supporter of the king’s rule, either. what would someone like her have to gain from the abolishment of the monarchy? as a member of the merchant class, she and her family would likely gain more influence in ardhalis, both political and social. we can see that the ps’s mission statement must be particularly lucrative for merchants, as seen by the involvement of anslow, mctrevor, and flemmings. and as a titled noblewoman, lady a is likely more than just a pawn in their operation. perhaps she was even one of the financial backers for the early phantom scythe! as a phantom scythe member, this explains why she would have a reservation at the lonely traveler’s inn and at the carmine camelia.

ok now let’s psychoanalyze her. (i’m not a psychologist, so feel free to fact-check me). first of all, lady a demonstrates extreme paranoia. after her butler left her side for 10 minutes, she expressed fear that he had somehow been kidnapped. furthermore, in a later appearance at the carmine camelia, we can see that she has been busy building her security team, with the addition of a new bodyguard in addition to her butler. perhaps something happened to her in her childhood that caused her to have this kind of reaction. my guess is that a family member of hers was kidnapped from a public place, which explains her extreme reaction to the butler’s disappearance. perhaps they were kidnapped because of their connections to the phantom scythe. who knows? maybe i’m just overanalyzing everything.


End file.
